TV Recap: ‘V,’ “It’s Only the Beginning”

Photo courtesy of ABC

Boy, did I hate that gimmicky “14 Hours Earlier” thing at the beginning. What a cheap way to draw in viewers. However, the episode did get considerably better from there.

The show picks up right where the last one left off: Jack, Ryan, Georgie and Erica are meeting at the church to introduce themselves and start forming plans for the resistance. During the rest of the episode, we’re treated to some serious action involving the resistance, who decide to kidnap a scientist involved in the creation of a new V ‘vitamin shot’ program.

After some hiccups that involve Georgie getting shot and the scientist downing a fiery suicide capsule, Erica, Jack and Ryan make their way to a secret lab where they think the shots are being manufactured. Turns out, the Vs’ vitamins are just misdirection – they’re really putting poison in our flu vaccinations. That’s right, FLU VACCINATIONS. I’m sure they wrote the scripts way in advance, but I can’t help but wonder whether the focus on flu is deliberate. It’s either a really good choice or really poor choice: What might be construed as fear-mongering could turn people off to the show, but at the same time it’s true that introducing something into our vaccines would be a great way to make sure we get it …

Oh well, it all gets blown up in the end.

There’s a touchy moment when Erica asks Ryan how he knows so much about the Vs, and then another one when she finds out he’s a visitor, but the tension is quickly (if not completely) resolved when push comes to shove and she needs his help getting away during their botched kidnapping escapade. It seems Ryan is going to have a conflict of interest in this fight. He seems to have some qualms with doing what might be necessary to win this fight: Kill the Vs. Secondly, his wife Valarie is showing interest in the Vs’ healing centers because of her heart condition.

The editors are really using cinematography to make their point about the media; the cameras sweep in and out of the TV during news segments to switch scenes, and giving characters a habit of staring cynically at bogus news reports in every episode. This show is really hitting hard on the media, and that’s painfully obvious during Erica’s somewhat-contrived warehouse spiel on “human predictability.” But for all her cynicism, Chad seems to be getting itchy again with the way the Vs are jerking him around, and is getting ready to go all “no more Mr. Nice Reporter anymore” when Vs’ healing technologies reveal he’ll die of a brain aneurism in six months if they don’t treat it right away.

We also got a much more detailed glimpse into Anna’s mind control capabilities – or ‘bliss’ – in this episode, with her jumping naked onto some vibrating wave pool to broadcast her calming thoughts to the whole world. Even the traitor in their midst, Joshua (who has just come back from skinning his comrade), seems to take comfort in her words. And speaking of Joshua, it’s confirmed in this episode that he did indeed kill Dale. While I’m a little disappointed, I suppose that was necessary to prevent him from blowing Erica’s cover.

And the show pretty much ensured viewers would tune in for next year’s first episode, what with Father Jack getting stabbed and all. Seriously, how did that guy find his way back to the church?

Oh, and WE’RE HAVING A BABY.

An alien baby, that is. I knew Valarie was there for something, if only to be an incubator.

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